


in search of light

by cindo



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Death is a smug bastard, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, orpheus story ft. laurent and damen, the underworld adventures no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 02:10:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11522349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cindo/pseuds/cindo
Summary: Condemned to the Underworld by magic and betrayal, Damen has nothing left to him except the promise of vengeance, of setting right what he did wrong, but with no means of leaving Death’s suffocating hold, there is very little he can do.Then, Laurent comes.





	in search of light

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Captive Prince Anthology Project. Thanks to Jane Marie (@lets-talk-about-captive-prince) for the beta, and berahthraben (@berahthraben) for the art!

There is talk of little else the day Laurent of Vere comes to the Underworld, a single spot of brightness among the dead. They are dreadful gossips, having nothing else left to them, and Damen knows better than to listen.

So it’s by chance, only, that he catches sight of a head of gold slipping through the arching doors of Death’s palace, and sees instead the ghost of a man dead longer than him.

Damen knows, down to the core of his soul, that he shouldn’t go, shouldn’t see, shouldn’t allow the single thought running through his mind to take hold - stories and warnings and half a dozen reasons that laid out in perfect clarity exactly _why_ he shouldn’t -

_\- a golden collar clasped around his neck before he knows what’s going on, and he is swallowed by unyielding darkness, dragging him down; the last thing he sees is Kastor’s steady gaze, unflinching, without regret -_

When he swallows, he can still feel the weight of the metal against his throat. Damen goes.

The palace is a sweeping thing, built on brick and grey stone cut smooth, marble pillars and carpeted floors. It is empty, and also _silent_ , which is how Damen hears Laurent’s voice as clear as day.

“I’ve come for my brother,” Laurent says from somewhere ahead of him, and Damen sucks in a breath, because if the confidence in Laurent’s voice is anything to go by, and there is a way to _go back_ , then he is -

Damen takes the last steps at a jog, sees Death perched atop his throne, that terrible smile cutting across his face like a scar.

“Auguste of Vere? I seem to have misplaced him.” He waves a hand through the air. His eyes, empty and hollow and endless, touch upon Damen, and he tips his head slightly, almost mockingly, before turning his attention back to Laurent. “You may have him if you find him, but.” He holds up a finger. “If this is not done before the sun sets in the land above, then you will remain here. A chance for a chance. Fair, no?”

 _Don’t_ , Damen wants to tell him, knowing how this will end and feeling sick for it. _Don’t make a bargain with Death; don’t gamble your life away; don’t, don’t don’t._

Don’t trust Kastor. Don’t listen to Jokaste. Don’t come back.

His life had ended with a series of don’ts. He doesn’t think he can take another one.

He steps forward. The motion draws both pairs of eyes on him, Laurent’s narrowing ever so slightly.

 _No going back,_ Damen thinks, and says, voice echoing, “I’ll help you find Auguste.”

***

Laurent is silent until they reach the edge of the river Cocytus, winding around the palace, and then he turns on Damen so suddenly that Damen almost misses his next step.

“‘I’ll help you find Auguste’?” Laurent says, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “I don’t recall ever asking for your help.”

He doesn’t back down. “No,” he says, keeping his voice even despite the growing desire to take Laurent by the shoulders and give him a good shake, but death has made Damen more cautious if not wise, and he pushes on. “But I’ve been here longer than you. You’ll need all the help you can get, if you really want to find him before sunset.”

“I have nothing to offer you.”

“No,” Damen says again.

This is what Laurent doesn’t know: if he succeeds, it will be everything Damen hasn’t let himself hope for since he got here. “Just the fact that you’re here is enough. And besides.” He closes his eyes and sees Auguste’s armor streaked with blood and dirt and sweat, sees the point of his sword dip as he motions for Damen to pick up his. “I respected your brother. His skill on the field.”

“You are Akielon.” Laurent’s voice is a sprawling thing, slow and precise. His words are sharp enough to cut. “Our countries are at war. Kastor is a better commander than king, and the army he leads advances each day.” His features twist into a sneer as he adds, “Is that not what you want to hear? Barbarians to the very end.”

 _Barbarians_ , as if Vere was any better, with their petty games and poisoned promises. “No,” he grinds out, clenching his fists at his sides. “I don’t want that.” It would be easy, wouldn’t it? To throttle Laurent where he stands.

Damen is already dead; he has nothing to lose.

_Don’t._

“I wanted - _want_ \- peace between our countries. Like it had been, before.” Not a farce, not a trick. “I’ll help you find you brother. I don’t want anything from you.”

Laurent doesn’t look like he believes him, but Damen doesn’t need to be believed, only needs Laurent to accept the help, no matter how hard it might be for him to do so. Up close, he can’t help thinking that for all the sharpness in his eyes and his clever, quicksilver mind, Laurent is so young.

Younger still, when he lost his brother.

“Why?” Laurent asks finally.

Because Damen is selfish beyond means, and he _wants_ so badly - to feel the cold air against his skin, to know another’s warmth beneath his touch, to live - but there is also this: “Because you didn’t deserve it.” A childhood punctuated by loss, defined by it. “Because Auguste deserves to be found.”

Laurent considers; Damen lets him.

Then, Laurent produces a spool of thread that seems to glow, and holds it out for Damen to see. “A favor,” Laurent says plainly. “She said it would help.”

 _Who said?_ He wants to asks, but suspects he knows the answer when they both see it at the same time: a mirroring light reflected in the water beside them, hovering.

Laurent purses his lips and strides towards the water’s edge.

_Don’t._

He catches Laurent’s arm in a half-aborted gesture to tell him to _wait_ , but Laurent bends down and catches the stream between his fingers at the same time, and the world around them dissolves, fills suddenly with color.

Laurent is not with him.

Disoriented, Damen looks around the room he finds himself in. _Veretian,_ the designs carved on the walls scream at him, lined with silver and gleaming iron, but he’s only ever seen Vere’s famous forts from afar, only ever thought about them in terms of how to take them, how to beat them.

The simple truth is that Damen doesn’t know what the inside of a Veretian room looks like, but the room is as real as if he _did_ know, down to every last detail, and he isn’t alone.

Auguste is here, head bowed, sitting by the bed where a woman lay beneath the covers. He’s dressed in the Veretian style, all cloth and laces, and doesn’t look up at Damen’s approach.

Damen _knows_ who she is, recognizes her from glimpses in the shadow, atop a barren hill. The knowledge is sudden and all-consuming, bone-deep and aching, as Damen watches the memory unfold before him.

“Laurent.” Auguste’s voice, low and hoarse and _small_ , startles him out of his thoughts. Damen looks up to see Auguste’s gaze catch his own, and he tenses, opens his mouth as if he has an explanation for this, but Auguste only continues, “Laurent, come here.”

Damen finds himself moving closer to the bed, pulled by some unseen tether.

He looks down at the woman on the bed. High cheek bones on a face that is too gaunt, pale-white, she is unmoving except for the barest rise and fall of her chest.

“Perhaps princes should study to become doctors, not soldiers. I went to war knowing that her health was failing. What sort of son does that make me?” The silence is not overbearing until Auguste shatters it, the words casual and cruel, though Damen knows it is not Laurent he wields them against.

“Laurent.” Auguste looks through Damen. “Why did it have to be her?” His tone is incredulous, and Damen finds himself unable to move. It’s not his place, not his grief bubbling like acid in his chest, but he reaches out anyways.

Auguste folds against him, and Damen wonders - wonders if this is memory or myth, tries to imagine Laurent as a boy trying to comfort his brother, his prince.

And it’s not comfort Damen offers now, but it’s all he has to give, as a single tear rolls down Auguste’s cheek, falls -

\- the golden thread spins from where it splashes against Damen’s skin, wrapped tight around his wrist, and continues on, a trail leading towards the edges of the memory, where it is not so suffocating.

The room melts away as suddenly as it came. The sound of rushing water presses against him, and he surfaces with a gasp to find Laurent perched at the river’s edge, expression caught halfway between surprise and disdain.

For a moment, Damen can’t shake Auguste’s face from his mind as he looks at him. Laurent has his mother’s cheekbones, high and regal, he thinks distantly.

“That was not yours to see,” Laurent says, and the image is broken. Still, he offers a hand that Damen accepts.

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Laurent is the first to look away. Damen follows his gaze to his wrist, and is surprised to see a golden cuff around it.

 _Like a shackle_ , comes his first thought, angrily, a matching set with the collar around his throat, and he is about to turn on Laurent - _Veretians and their games,_ he should’ve known.

But there is a spark of anger in Laurent’s eyes that tells Damen more than Laurent is perhaps willing to give, mirroring his own, so he only swallows, and says, “I know where to go.”

They follow the thread along the river, with Damen determinedly not looking at the cuff around his wrist. Laurent has not said anything, but Damen catches his gaze drifting towards the collar once or twice. The similarity between the collar and the cuff hasn’t escaped him either, Damen knows.

There’s a part of him that wants to shrink away from the scrutiny, but all he feels is a tired sort of anger, what remains of his pride.

 _Let him see me,_ he thinks. _Let him see the consequences of my mistakes, my foolish trust._ It’s a poor trade for the memory of pain and grief in that palace room.

“I don’t remember much of her.” Laurent’s voice is steady.

“That you remember her at all,” he says, “is enough.”

“Is it.”

Damen thinks about the things he left behind, the people who might remember him. _No_ , it isn’t, but.

He squints against the hazy smoke of the Underworld, looking for white ash and charred bone atop a hillside, the glint of gold.

“It’s all we have,” he says, and then he sees her, leaning against the trunk of an ash tree: the wispy form of a woman, the pale glimmer of her hair the only shining thing in the area.

Damen curses.

Beside him, Laurent’s breath catches. He turns to Damen, and the cold fury in his eyes makes Damen flinch.

“If this is a _game_ to you - ” Laurent starts, measured. He looks at the collar at Damen’s throat. “I will make what you have experienced so far look like child’s play.”

Damen doesn’t rise to the bait. “It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t mean to see.” Auguste with his heart laid bare, their mother dying a slow death.

“So it is coincidence, then? That you would take us here, after what you saw.” Laurent tilts his chin up, keeps his gaze leveled at Damen. “If you think _sentiment_ will lead me to do something foolish - ”

“ _Sentiment_ ,” Damen spits out, “is what got you here in the first place, for Gods’ sake, Laurent, you’re already a fool for coming here.” He can’t do this; he doesn’t have the patience, the temper.

He jabs a finger in the direction of Laurent’s mother. “She is a shade, less than that. Everyone knows of her, knows she comes here, sometimes, and I thought that Auguste would know it, too.” Would come here, to the place his mother’s spirit haunts, with his grief and his regret, but there is only the shell of a woman who was once a queen. His gaze tracks along the thread, wrapped thrice around the thick trunk of the tree before it trails away.

Not here.

Beside him, Laurent has gone deathly still. Damen sees the distant look in icy eyes, and knows what’s next, what’s coming

He moves to grab Laurent’s arm and pull him away, but finds himself met with the clear ringing of steel, and then he’s staring down the length of Laurent’s sword, drawn between them.

“I’m already dead,” Damen says, flat.

Laurent’s lips curl as he takes a step back. “Don’t touch me.”

“Laurent.” Damen keeps his eyes trained on the distance between Laurent and the queen, slowly shrinking. “We need to leave.”

“You were the one who wanted to come.” Another step.

“Yes, but - ”

“Do you think,” Laurent says quietly, “that a few pretty words and a glimpse of the past that has nothing to do with you is the same as trust? You are even more of a fool if you do.”

Even though he should know better, Damen flinches anyways, feels his cheeks grow warm and that familiar anger take hold. “Not everyone is your enemy,” he snaps, defensive in spite of himself.

Laurent’s voice is velvet soft. “But you are. Your countrymen are enemies of mine. Damianos of Akielos killed my brother, killed Auguste, and do you think forgiveness is so easy to come by?”

 _Forgiveness._ Forgiveness isn’t what he wants, isn’t what he deserves, yet -

The words die on his lips.

Instead, Damen says, “Laurent, step away from her.” His words are drowned out by the sudden rush of noise, a chorus of wants and regrets left to fester and rot.

The thing that was Laurent’s mother attacks without warning, reaching out with fingers made of bone and shadow towards Laurent’s frozen form. Damen moves before he realizes he’s moving, shoves Laurent out of the way as he puts himself squarely in the shade’s way.

It screeches its dissatisfaction as it claws at Damen, making deep gouges across his arms. Damen winces at the pain, but he is already dead.

Laurent is not.

He grapples with the shade, which has abandoned any semblance of human form in favor of snapping teeth and sightless eyes, shaped by Death. It presses forward in a sudden surge of strength, catches Damen by the throat, pins him to the ground, and then Damen is staring into an empty gaze threatening to swallow him whole in grief and aching loneliness, the type of pain that eats people alive, let alone dead -

_He can’t breathe._

But the shade screams again, recoils, and the weight on Damen’s chest disappears. Light floods back into his vision as the emptiness recedes. He blinks and sees Laurent hunched over the shuddering form of his mother, sword thrust through its chest before he pulls it through in a single motion, cleaving the shade in two.

Laurent scoffs and carefully sheathes the sword. “Sentiment,” he says, “makes fools of us all.”

They walk in silence after that, following the golden thread. If the sky seems darker than when they started, Damen doesn’t say so. He remembers Death’s words clearly, knows it for the trick that they are.

Laurent’s words still sting, opened a wound that had never closed, and Damen can’t quite meet Laurent’s eyes.

Lost in thought, he nearly walks into Laurent when the other stops suddenly. Without turning around, Laurent asks, “Why are you here?”

Damen’s tired of this dance. “Auguste is - ”

“No.” Laurent cuts him off. “Here, dead. Why are you dead? How did you die?”

Damen feels a weight settle in his stomach. Once more, he sees the pity in Jokaste’s eyes, the triumph in Kastor’s, sees the slaves’ baths where he was taken, held down. The collar -

“I trusted someone I shouldn’t have,” he says softly. “I didn’t listen to someone I should have.”

“You want to go back.”

“Yes. I want to go back. If we find Auguste, if you can take him back, then that means it’s not impossible, and as long as it’s not impossible, I’ll find a way.” He forces himself to meet Laurent’s eyes. “I’m not asking for forgiveness, but I meant what I said before. That I want peace between our countries.”

Laurent nods, takes a deep breath. He picks up the thread pooling at their feet and offers it to Damen, who wraps it around his hand and knows what has to be done.

Right before Laurent clasps his hand, Damen hears him say, “I want it, too.”

***

This time, Damen knows where he is. The roar of the soldiers of both armies is muted, distant. There is only one voice above the rest, and that’s -

“Pick up your sword, Damianos.”

Auguste stands before him, Vere’s starburst bright on his chest. Like a piece in a play already written, Damen moves, his limbs heavy, aching with phantom exhaustion as he does exactly as he did two years ago.

They fight as if they’re dancing, each step already choreographed, every labored breath only an echo of a moment already gone. Damen’s driven back under Auguste’s unrelenting assault, and he feels the familiar claws of panic begin to thread their way through every desperate parry, every sidestep made just in time.

His breathing is loud in his ears as he ducks, spins, and his eyes widen because he knows what’s coming, knows what _happens_ -

\- Auguste shifts his weight, cuts left, and Damen’s mind races. _A feint_ \- the same thought, reflected over and over - _no_ \- he can still stop this, and he is lightheaded as hope blooms in his chest.

Auguste doesn’t have to die at Marlas. Laurent’s words come back to him, small and hesitant and sincere. _I want this, too._

Peace, untouched by death.

Damen stops his swing, muscles taut, and everything stills.

Then he sees the flash of a sword - _his_ sword - and Laurent holding it, moving with Damen’s grace and his strength, finishing his swing even as Damen reaches out -

\- _don’t._

Damen’s sword is buried in Auguste’s side, the light fading from his eyes. He collapses, and Damen follows, what strength he has giving way to exhaustion and grief.

Laurent is there.

“You can’t change the past,” he says lowly, and holds his hand over Auguste’s still form. “You can’t change what’s already happened.”

Then, Auguste clasps his brother’s hand tightly in his own, pulls himself to his feet, and he’s before them, dressed in the same armor that he was wearing the day Damen killed him.

“You knew,” he breathes, the only thing he manages past the shock threatening to choke him.

“Of course I did. I knew from the start. You think I wouldn’t know the face of my brother’s killer? Damianos.” He says it without inflection, a statement of fact instead of the accusation that it should’ve been. He turns to Auguste with a thousand unsaid things in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Auguste brings their foreheads together, and they are almost reflections of each other, shadows of could’ve beens and was nots. He closes his eyes, like a man finally come home, and says _brother_ , says _thank you,_ says _goodbye._

Carefully, Auguste picks the golden thread out of the air and twines it around Laurent’s wrist. Another cuff forms from the layers, a mirror of Damen’s own, and Damen gasps, realizing what it means.

Auguste meets his eyes.

“Auguste, I - ”

“I would not have done it if I thought you were undeserving.” Auguste touches his heart lightly, bows at the waist: a greeting between equals. He smiles, ironic. “If things had been different, perhaps. Farewell, Damianos.”

Damen is left staring at air, and doesn’t move when Laurent steps up behind him.

“Why?” he asks, voice breaking.

Laurent places his hand on Damen’s back, the same spot Kastor’s knife went through him, a lifetime ago. “Because you didn’t deserve it, either.”

Damen feels a weight against his back, feels the brush of Laurent’s hair against the base of his neck. “My uncle and Kastor will destroy everything if they are unstopped,” Laurent says quietly. “I can’t. I can’t face them by myself.”

He knows the words for what they plainly are, and this time, Damen is ready. “Let me help you,” he says, steady and sure. “We’ll find peace together.”

Laurent’s touch is warm against his shoulder and there is a promise in the hum of his voice, as the world dissolves around them. “Together.”

 _There it is_ , Damen thinks. He turns his head towards the sun, and _breathes_.

 


End file.
